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Troop withdrawals in CO2 (possible?)

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Hi guys,

I was wondering if, when making a scenario, one can program in a historical troop withdrawal to occur at a certain time or under certain conditions? Like if one is making a long play campaign, could one withdraw a brigade or division in its entirety at a certain date or under certain circumstantial triggers the same way/similar to the way that reinforcements are scheduled?
 

Bie

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The only trigger I can think of, and it is kind of finicky, is to put objectives on the map where the retreating forces should head to. Put in the time and date to correspond with the historical troop withdrawal and make it so that other objectives end, so that units don't linger in places you don't want to. So this will simulate units that abandon their current positions and head to another defensive line.

Last but not least: if this is something you only want the AI to do then don't put in any values for these objective. The AI will try to achieve these objectives, but they will not appear in the objectives list (as they are not awarded any points anyway).
 
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Many thanks Bie, it's a work-around.

The reason I'm asking is I'm thinking of doing a Philippines 1941-42 scenario and one of the Japanese main forces, the 48th Division, will need be be withdrawn from combat by the end of 1941 (historically it was sent to Indonesia to fight in the Dutch East Indies campaign). This might be dicier than I initially thought...
 

Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor

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One thing to keep in mind is that CO2 is not really designed to simulate battles over a long period of time. I'd recommend ten days or less. The reason for this is that we don't yet model replacements and repair, which are pretty essential to model the sustainment of forces over a long period of time. So perhaps you might consider breaking up a longer period into a series of scenarios and one or more of these could start after that force is withdrawn and you just don't include it in the active force list.
 
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Many thanks Bie, it's a work-around.

The reason I'm asking is I'm thinking of doing a Philippines 1941-42 scenario and one of the Japanese main forces, the 48th Division, will need be be withdrawn from combat by the end of 1941 (historically it was sent to Indonesia to fight in the Dutch East Indies campaign). This might be dicier than I initially thought...
I did a 21-day scenario to cover the whole battle of Saipan. Since the Japanese forces in that battle were isolated from supply (and denied evacuation routes), I didn't have the problem of withdrawing forces.

As Dave mentioned, it didn't work as realistically as I wanted because the repair / replace aspect for damaged equipment was missing. At some point I can break it apart into shorter duration key battles for the island, but as a relatively long campaign, it doesn't work well.
 
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Definitely! That's perfectly fine, I was asking mainly in the vein of seeing what is and isn't possible - as before, CO2 is more a battle simulator than a campaign simulator. That being said, it looks to be excellent for simulating multi-day engagements if not actual campaigns. That opens up a lot of possibility from the easiest, WW2 and 20th century conflicts, to mod to pre-modern era battles (thinking Civil War general type battles, Napoleonic, etc.)

In any case, a Philippine campaign would really be best split into an Initial Landings scenario comprising the entirety of Luzon and allowing the USAFFE player to take MacArthur's role - try to stop the Japanese on the beaches, failing that then retreating with his force intact to Bataan (the Calumpit bridgehead being key to the situation) while the Japanese with stronger and better forces is forced to decide whether to 1) capture the strategic objective of Manila, 2) destroy MacArthur's forces so they no longer pose a threat, 3) accomplish this before the scenario ends (around the time that the 48th Division was withdrawn for the Java campaign) - which, again, were the problems that General Masaharu Homma faced in 1941.

Scenario variations would include making the "Pensacola Convoy" forces available to MacArthur, making MacArthur adhere more to War Plan Orange 3 by pulling his forces south of the Bagbag River/Calumpit Bridge and creating a defensive line there that the Japanese must then flank or crack (though this might mean... amphibious landings or a workaround thereof) and a Fortress Manila option which sees MacArthur not declaring Manila an Open City but fortifying and defending the old city.

Definitely worth exploring!

Again, many thanks guys!
 
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